All in all, Toh Shin Den is a great fighting game. The texture-mapped polygon look is amazing, and the sidestepping feature brings something new to defense. With a little tweaking of the controls and fighting angles, this fighter could have been a perfect contender.

Battle Arena Toshinden will forever change the way you look at fighting games (at least until you see Tekken in a few months). It's exciting to see where the next level of gaming platforms is taking us. Just think, this game is being released in the early months of Playstation's existence. What will be seeing two years from now?

The Japanese version of Toshinden is one of my favorite fighting games ever and is quite obviously on the the most groundbreaking home games of all time. This is still true of the American version, but the "minor" changes inflicted on a near-perfect game by SCEA caused TSD to slip slightly on the Nick Rox Joy Chart. Although still a fantastic game, the new voices and broke L and R buttons caused me much heartbreak.

Once you get past BAT's downsides, it's an extremely fun game. Over a network, modem, and null-modem connection it's a must! The kicker is that this game works for two people with one copy! As long as once player has the CD in the drive, your buddy can play multi-player games of BAT with you, without requiring them to purchase a second copy. Now you CANNOT play BAT without the CD as a single player game with the multi-player install, but hey what do you want for FREE? If you liked FX Fighter, Mortal Kombat III, and Virtua Fighter, then give BAT a shot. For fighting gamers, this is probably the best yet, because of the strong multi-player options!

Although Battle Arena Toshinden doesn't have anything that we haven't seen before in a polygonal fighting game, is a very good example of the genre. If you are a fan of VS fighting games, or if you have a few friends you've been dying to beat up, this game should keep all of you entertained for a long time.

At first, this is all very spectacular and impressive, but after a while you long for a bit of simple hand-to-hand violence, instead of people stabbing each other with 70-foot pikes and shooting exocet missiles from their arse. It's a bit too easy to hit people from miles away and the fireballs are relatively easy to set off, and a bit too effective. This might be just fine and dandy as far as you're concerned, but really they might just as well carry guns and be done with it. This is true to the original game, of course, but it still leaves something to be desired as a beat 'em up. If they'd just left it as a no-frills sword-fighting game, it would have been a lot better.

Toshinden is the most visually impressive fighting game I have ever seen. The game plays well and the characters are all pretty cool. Unfortunately, once you've seen all it has to offer, it loses it's appeal. Don't get me wrong. I enjoy Toshinden, but it gets tiresome. The American version as changed voices and music. Most of you won't really care, but if you've played the import game, it is rather annoying. Toshinden is cool. Show it off to your friends.

With it's stunning visuals, Battle Arena Toshinden is as fun to watch as it is to play. Had there been more technique involved, this arena could have been a real contender. It's a formidable effort, but fighting buffs may pick this game clean too quickly.

Toh Shin Den by Takara is the ultimate fight of the underground world. This fight, which has not been held for a long time, is called the Techo-Rage and has brought together eight of the world's best travelling fighters. Some of them have come for personal glory while others have come for their loved ones. They are prepared to do their utmost to gain victory. Will you be strong enough to help bring one of them to glory?

Overall, Toshinden PCT is a decent conversion of a pretty good console fighter. It's a 3D fighting game for your PC, which is a rarity, and, more than that, it's a fun and playable one, with well animated, well textured characters; but unless you're up for spending another $200 for a 3D board, don't go showing it off to your Sony-enamored friends. Of course, they don't get the secret PC only character (can anyone say "Earthworm?").

The graphics are also equally impressive. In fact, one might even say they were gorgeous. The backgrounds are nice, and the detail in the characters' faces is exceptional. The game also makes good use of light shading. Not as impressive as, say, Tekken 2, but then again, BAT was part of the PlayStation's initial launch group. The game makes good use of the basic fighter preset - kick, punch, etc.- and throws in a few cool projectiles to boot. Unfortunately, Toshinden does tend to respond a little slowly. And in fighters, that can mean everything.

Battle Arena Toshinden looks good (although the animation on the fighters is not a patch on similar games in the genre) and plays entertainingly enough - however, Namco's Tekken title (out officially in November) is faster, smoother, has more moves and far more characters to master. Our advice would be to leave this on the shelves and wait for the Namco title - it's a whole generation beyond this release.

Battle Arena Toshinden's one saving grace is that it's completely networkable, either through directly-networked computers or modem, so you can beat down people around the world. While the graphics and music to Battle Arena are great, actual play could be vastly improved.

Despite its gameplay flaws, I still view Toshinden as somewhat of a breakthrough game on the PlayStation. It introduced the wonders of 3D fighting to the console gaming world and that in itself is something I look back fondly on. But, as a fighting game compared to the many great brawlers available today it just doesn’t have the gameplay depth to compete. Go out and pick up a used copy of Battle Arena Toshinden if you want to experience a little piece of videogaming history, but don’t expect much more than that or you’re bound to be disappointed.

The characters are a bit blocky with visible polygon seams, and the stages do a lousy job of blending photo-realistic backgrounds with chunky polygon foregrounds. While not as deep as Tekken, Toshinden is still a respectable game, and unlike many other fighters, its matches don't run very long. Its age is clearly showing, but Toshinden is an interesting game to look back on.

Ultimately, Battle Arena Toshinden is a forgettable fighting game overshadowed by its brothers. Genre titles released well before Battle Arena arrived on the scene manage to outperform it in terms of speed and all around entertainment. That alone set the game up for obscurity, and with the eventual release of games like Tekken and Soul Blade, Battle Arena became an even less desirable choice. From there, the game had nowhere to go but the cold limbo of obsolescence, where it joined myriad WWF/E video games and a handful of forgotten launch titles. There you can still find it, and possibly you’ll even enjoy it… if you're willing to forget all of the advancements showcased in modern fighting games.